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Dear Friend,
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A few years ago, I had an idea for a newspaper column. I wanted to write a weekly column about the South as seen through the eyes of its women. As a young girl, I was trained and educated as a journalist and started this world of words as a sports writer. Once newspaper ink seeps into your blood, you are stained for life. Doing a syndicated column addressed my love for both newspaper journalism and the South.
My column now appears in several dozen newspapers across the South while I muse over life in this beloved region and the folks who live that life. My most popular columns are most simple in thought and story but readers relate and enjoy a moment to take a stroll down the heart-warming paths of their memories. Letters pour in when I write about clothes lines - they're disappearing, you know - screen doors, back porches and mud pies. Surprisingly, one of my most popular columns had to do with cast iron skillets and the importance of such to Southern womanhood.
I am nothing more than a storyteller, born of the Scotch-Irish (I'm an 11th |
generation Georgian) who lyrically weaved stories from the most mundane. My parents told great stories and so did my grandparents. I am simply carrying on the family tradition.
In my column - carried in papers from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Biloxi, Mississippi - you will meet a cast of unforgettable characters such as Claudette, whose in-laws are outlaws; Merri Grace who carries Southern protocol to the extreme; Dixie Dew, my red-haired dachshund, who has become a celebrity in her own right and is a bark person for the Dixie Dog Diner, and, of course, Mama. Folks love my mama because she is unforgettable and irrepressible. If she thinks it, she says it and never looks back. Most daughters can identify.
I also write a regular column for Y'all magazine, a wonderfully Southern tome published out of Oxford, Mississippi. For your enjoyment, you'll find a sample of both the newspaper column and a Y'all column here.
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Bless you,
Ronda
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Ronda Rich / Rhonda Rich